December 11 · This Day in America
Four days after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. Within hours, Franklin Roosevelt sends Congress a short, grim message asking it to recognize the state of war that has been thrust upon the country. The vote is not close. The House declares war on Germany 393 to nothing, then on Italy 399 to nothing; the Senate, unanimous as well. A nation that spent two decades arguing about whether to stay out of the world's wars stops arguing in a single afternoon. Now it is one war, on every ocean and continent, and the United States is fully in it. The factories that built cars will build tanks. The young men in the unanimous galleries will be the ones who go. From this day the question is no longer whether America will fight, but what it will become by the time it is over.
Source: history.house.gov
Also on this day · 1816
President James Madison signs the act admitting Indiana to the Union. Its constitution, hammered out by delegates who sometimes met under a giant elm tree in Corydon, outlaws slavery within the new state's borders. A wilderness territory becomes a self-governing American state, with a young man named Jonathan Jennings as its first governor and an elm tree in its origin story.
Source: www.ebsco.com